DTK 36

AN: Readers, I present you this offering today. Let me know if I fucked up what time it is anywhere. Also does anyone know the exact number of days its been since Valjean left? For... no reason in particular.

***

Sandy walked up to the monster, her footsteps full of a confidence I didn’t feel. We had never fought these things before.

Above us, the sky was red-orange. Gigantic black roots crisscrossed the landscape, some kind of strange, alien plant that I had to be careful to step over while following her.

Sandy swung on one of the monsters.

It was almost lazy and almost too easy. Her blade sunk into it, cutting apart scales and flesh and sinking half way into it. Then she jumped back.

I rushed forward at that, but it didn’t appear there was anything wrong. It was just a big, dumb lizard, rolling around in pain.

“You want your experience?” Sandy asked, looking over at me.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 9/10] [Cancel]

[+1 XP]

The lizards were worth less than the frost elementals. I doubted they’d be worth anything in another level, despite how relatively terrifying this floor was.

“Why are you so confident about these?” I asked as we swept around the floor, cleaning the first three lizards out.

Each of them were low to the ground, giant ugly things with shiny black scales. They were stupid, and slow.

“I remember eating them.” Sandy replied. “They taste great, by the way.”

I stopped following Sandy and stood still in my tracks.

“Do you think that this is the place?” I asked. She had kept walking forward, and she turned around now at me. A river of lava in the distance bubbled and popped, liquid stone pouring out and rapidly cooling and solidifying.

“No.” Sandy said, turning around. “The night she… the last night I saw her, she had been bringing home seafood all week.” Sandy started walking forward again.

“Seafood?” I asked, walking after her. I doubted the lava dungeon was going to open to some kind of grotto or water dungeon. “Hey, you don’t think the next level is going to bring us underground do you?”

“Don’t see why it would.” Sandy said.

“Isn’t that what most dungeons do? Head deeper underground?”

“What? No. The center dungeon took us to different forests.”

“So this one will… take us to different volcanos?” I asked.

Sandy grunted. We arrived at the next monster.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 8/10] [Cancel]

[+1 XP]

“Oops.” I said. I had killed it instantly before Sandy got a chance to get experience. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” She shrugged. “I’ll get experience carving it up.”

We cleaned out the third monster easily. The fourth we stopped at, staring at it a few feet away. It lounged on the hot ground near the rivers of lava. Its scales were bright red.

“Miniboss?” I asked.

“The frozen dungeon didn’t have one.”

“The monsters in there didn’t need one.” I said.

The red lizard looked up at us, tasting the air with its tongue. It turned away from where it was bathing in the heat of the lava river and walked towards us, dragging its stomach on the lava field.

The miniboss among the wolves was black and hid in shadow, the floors of the dungeon seeming to revolve around darkness, light, and illusions. Or maybe illusions were part of light? The bear had both stealth skills and light illusion skills, though the spiders had none.

So logically, the red lizard should be — 

Sandy tackled me out of the way as a stream of fire leapt out of the lizards mouth.

I pushed her off me and inspected her quickly.

“You gotta stop diving in the way of damage for me.” I said. This time, at least, she didn’t get hit.

Sandy scrambled forward and swung her sword. There was another wave of heat as I turned back to her in time to see her [Parry] the monster’s stream of fire, swinging a now red hot blade to instantly bisect the monster.

[+1 XP] [Level up]

“Shit.” Sandy said, waving her blade. The heat had stuck to it, leaving it nearly glowing. It cooled into a lumpy, misshapen form.

I brushed porous lava-stone off myself.

“Gerald should have a replacement for us by now.” I said, consoling Sandy. She was still frowning at the misshapen cleaver.

“Yeah.” She replied. “Do you have the rope on you?”

“Of course, — ” I flinched back as a bubble of lava popped in the river near by, splattering on the stone. “Yeah. It’s in my bag.”

I fumbled to bring the rope out as Sandy dragged the corpse of the lizard away from the lava. Sandy took it a handful at a time from me, wrapping it under and around the lizard to drag it forward. Sandy tied quick, proficient knots, then grunted as she pulled the lizard around.

She collected two more of the bodies, leaking blood as she dragged them through the lava planes and back toward the portal. I grabbed the other end of the rope, helping her pull. It must have been a few hundred pounds of meat.

If this was the central dungeon and not a tertiary one, we probably wouldn’t have been able to pull all of it out. We stepped out into night falling over the forest. Chill winds whipped through the trees, carving us. I grunted and reoriented myself, looking toward the town.

“So whats the plan? Wait for it to be fully dark?” I asked, gesturing with my head to the bodies we were dragging.

“Screw it. Let’s just pull them in.” Sandy said.

Might as well. Most of the town already knew.

It was a pain in the ass to drag the bodies over the uneven terrain, and the uncomfortable press of the Wild pushed in on us the entire time. The scalding heat of the lava plains was more comfortable in some ways than the irritating and constant itch of the area outside the town’s domain.

We left a trail of broken foliage dragging a stack of three lizard bodies back to Sandy’s house and up to the workshop. I ducked inside and changed back into my mundane clothes before stepping back out.

Cinnamon barked over the fence. I squinted, then dropped the rope and walked over to pet him.

At first I had thought he was standing against the fence, leaning on it to stand taller than it. Then I realized he was just shoulder height as tall as the little fenced area. It was only designed for pigs or small animals, and Henri had never replaced the ones he used to have.

Cinnamon bumped his nose into my hand as I pet him.

“Sandy?” I asked. “Are you feeding him like, stat raising food or something?”

Sandy pulled out a tanning rack and supplies from a shed on the side of the house. She was still wearing the Stormcaller outfit, though her helmet was under her arm. I hadn’t even thought about that as we walked into town. Killing monsters was becoming mundane; a new, seriously messed up normal.

Cinnamon whined as I stopped petting him. Then he stepped back from the fence and barked.

Sandy walked up next to me, holding a hand out for Cinnamon.

“All of dad’s food is stat enhancing?” She said, implying it was obvious. It kind of was. “I gotta change; you wanna untie the lizards?”

“I got it.” I said, eyeing Cinnamon. His tail was wagging at speed.

I turned about and started undoing Sandy’s knots. I struggled with them at first before managing to untug them, sending a few hundred pounds of lizard bodies falling sideways on the ground.

There was a thump behind me. I turned around slowly.

Cinnamon slowly padded passed me, leaning down and sniffing at the corpses. He reached out and scratched one of them with his foot. Then he barked again.

“What is it?” I asked. The dog swirled and looked at me. He was named after the patterning of his fur, great swirls of white through creamy orange, and his eyes matched, staring down into mine with uncanny intelligence.

He looked to me from one of the corpses, scratched at it, and barked again.

“You can’t eat that.” I said.

Cinnamon barked.

“What have they been feeding you? Do they even have enough food… I guess all the left over monster meat, maybe? There’s no way we can use all this material…” I said, mumbling to myself.

Cinnamon stepped passed, scratched the other lizard, looked at me, and barked. Was he asking of he could have one of the other bodies instead of the mini-boss corpse? I squinted at the dog. How intelligent was he?

“You can’t have that one either.” I said. I felt crazy for talking to a dog.

Then he stepped past, put his mouth around the third corpse, and started dragging it away.

“Hey!” I said, but he ignored me, dragging it right up to the gate.

Sandy popped out of her house, and to my surprise, Henri was behind her.

“Remember these?” She asked, turning around.

Henri looked down, saying nothing. He slowly reached into a front pocket on his jacket, pulling out a rolled cigarette and lighting it.

“Hey! Don’t do that in my room.” Sandy said, frowning.

Henri looked at her, took a step forward, and lit his cigarette. He took a long drag before replying.

“Yeah.” He replied, looking down at them.

“Where’d the third go?” Sandy asked.

“Uh… I said, stepping up to Cinnamon’s fence and looking over.

“Cinnamon!” Sandy said, following me to where he was currently tearing it apart in the pen. “Ugh. That one’s ruined. How did he get out?”

“Sandy, he is almost as tall as the fence.” I replied. She blinked, looking between the fence and back to her dad. Henri stared at the lizards still.

“It’s fine. There’s more than we can eat anyway. We should throw a dinner party.” Henri said. “Our pantry is practically full at this point.”

“You could sell it.” Sandy said.

“To Valjean. The noble. Who will be able to identify it as monster meat.” Henri said. Then he took another drag, still staring at the corpses. “Bring them inside.” He said before turning around to leave.

“Cinnamon! You’re supposed to ask before taking things! Do I not feed you enough…” Sandy said. She started walking around the fence to step inside.

“Sandy? The lizards?” I asked. 

She sighed and turned around.

We brought the lizards inside.

“Help me hang these.” She said.

I changed into my strength enhancing dress, helping her lift the corpses onto her hooks.

“Ow.” She said, recoiling her hand from pulling up the red lizard.

“What’s up?” I asked, leaning around, hoping she hadn’t stabbed her hand.

“Damn things blood burned me.” Sandy said, inspecting her hand. The monster’s blood sizzled where it hit the floor.

I stared at it for a moment. There’s no way it was completely valueless. If spider-blood could be refined into something, then this blood must have been equivalent to an alchemical product. I wondered if every part of the monster was more valuable than we were giving credit for. Working on our own, we could just barely pull out a few corpses a night, refining them into clothes.

But there was more value to gain.

“Sandy, can you…” I trailed off as she already put a bucket down below the blood draining from the monster. It was a shame how much of it had already been lost dragging it through the forest.

Sandy stared at the steaming blood worriedly, as if she was afraid it would start a fire in her bucket. After a minute or two, she shook her head. Then she easily picked up the remaining black lizard corpse and hung it one handed.

Right. She had a skill to help her handle bodies. But it seemed to be less effective on the more magical corpses.

This lizards blood was cold, black and oily.

Sandy got to work immediately, ripping into the red lizard before stepping back, the blood flowing faster as it was opened.

I plopped onto her bed and opened my skill shop.

►Mending I

[COMMON] Allows user to repair clothing from patterns they are unfamiliar with. Additional levels increase quality of final product.

►Unweaving I

[UNCOMMON] Grants user the ability recycle items into base materials. Additional levels increase the amount recycled.

►Pattern Projection I

[COMMON] Seamstress vision skill. Grants user access to a pattern overlay on fabric.

The system seemed to really want me to have mending. I sighed. I still had two points. I could look at patterns… or… I could push Warddrobe to X. I had no idea what it would do at X. Honestly, it wasn’t a valuable skill for most Seamstresses unless you had multiple outfits to show to different clients.

But I had no idea what it would do at level ten. My mom didn’t have it at level ten, so she didn’t know. It wasn’t something you needed, really. I could use it to swap between three outfits if I had it to ten… I wasn’t sure that would be worth it on its own. I did my due diligence and opening my pattern store too.

►[Common] Fishermans Coverall Pattern (Intermediate)

Grants minor bonus to Constitution and Dexterity. Grants bonus to Fishing

►[Common] Harvester’s Coverall (Basic)

Grants bonus to Constitution and Strength. Grants [Scythe Proficiency] skill level bsaed on craft quality and materials used.

►[Common] Seeders Uniform(Basic)

Grants bonus to Constitution and Strength. Grants set bonus skill based on craft quality and materials used.